PORT TOWNSEND — Officials signed Jefferson County’s first community wildfire protection plan, an extensive document that lays out the process for responding to and preventing wildfires.
“The impact really is across all of the boundaries of all the agencies and jurisdictions involved in its development,” said Brett Black, chief of East Jefferson Fire Rescue. “It prioritizes and strategizes for how we fund and protect communities for all things wildfire.”
Black said the plan also provides consistent messaging and community education materials for the public.
“Now we’re all saying the same thing,” Black said for the various jurisdictions involved in the plan. “It streamlines the information flow between agencies.”
The plan includes hundreds of pages of documents with detailed information about the fire risks in dozens of geographical areas in the county as well as materials for homeowners on how to reduce fire risk.
A 161-page document with more than 300 pages of appendixes, the plan was signed by representatives from Jefferson County, the city of Port Townsend, East Jefferson Fire Rescue and the state Department of Natural Resources at the Jefferson County Commissioners’ meeting Monday.
Before the signing, District 2 Commissioner Heidi Eisenhour said the plan had been several years in the making and involved several community groups, sometimes in meetings with 40-50 people.
“I feel if we spend time doing this, it’ll save us having to do some other, less-planned work,” Eisenhour said.
Emma Bolin, who signed the document as the director of planning and community development for the city of Port Townsend, said the plan will help educate the community about wildfire protections. The city is not bound by the plan, Bolin said, and the document is more geared toward strengthening relationships.
“It’s more about looking for opportunities to enhance public education,” she said.
Black said Jefferson County was one of the few remaining in Washington not to have a community wildfire plan. Having one in place is a requirement to obtain certain state and federal wildfire grants, he said.
Clallam County has a community wildfire plan from 2009 but received a $125,000 grant last year from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help draft an update.
Black noted at the meeting that the National Interagency Fire Center — the national fire response agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior — recently raised the nationwide fire preparedness level from Level 2 to Level 3.
“Three is high, and three is early for this time of year,” Black said.
Jefferson County updated its fire regulations last month to move the county’s fire danger warning system to match the color-coded, 1-5 scale of the National Fire Danger Rating System used by the federal government and to automatically enact a low-level burn ban starting July 1.
On Monday, Jefferson County’s fire danger rating was Level 2, moderate.
In previous years, fire officials would have had to specifically request a burn ban from county commissioners, but following the update, the ban — which mainly prohibits burning for landscaping and clearing purposes — automatically runs from July 1-Sept. 30.
The ban doesn’t prohibit the use of certain fireworks during one of the two times a year they’re allowed in Washington, but Black said the danger from even small fireworks is still high.
“The thing to remember is, a few weeks of light rain does not negate months of dry drought,” Black said.
Parts of Western Washington, including Clallam and Jefferson counties, have been under drought conditions since last summer that have yet to be lifted.
Black said many fireworks that are available for purchase on tribal reservations are never legal to ignite on non-tribal land, even during the Fourth of July and New Year’s holidays.
Every year, departments see an increase in fires started by fireworks in the week surrounding the Fourth of July, Black said, but more common are injuries caused by fireworks.
“I would remind everybody to be safe about how and where they set fireworks,” Black said.
Having a garden hose and bucket of water on hand to soak used or dud fireworks is encouraged.
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Reporter Peter Segall can be reached by email at peter.segall@peninsuladailynews.com.
